Tag Archive for: coup

Myanmar’s revolution against repression

Myanmar moves from military coup to a civil war that is now a revolution. The junta’s bungled effort to turn the clock back by seizing power in February 2021 has been a bloody fiasco.

The regime ‘controls’ less than half of Myanmar: it’s ‘too unpopular to control the countryside, yet too powerful to yield the cities’. And much of that ‘control’ is contested.

Unable to impose its will, the junta is mired in failure—in its operations, its understanding and its standing.

Calling it a ‘junta’ may be too kind, suggesting military competence and political dominance. Perhaps ‘mafia regime’ is closer.

Myanmar’s wicked tragedy has completed the military’s journey from revered institution to reviled enemy. The extent of the regime’s failure on so many fronts is one of the few firm facts amid the fog of Myanmar’s war.

While it still has the strongest military force (equipment, firepower and control of the air), the junta is fighting ‘on an unprecedented number of fronts’. The International Institute for Strategic Studies reports that the conflict rages in seven theatres which can be grouped into three categories:

  • borderland resistance strongholds (southeast Myanmar, Kachin State and northwest Myanmar) 
  • central contested areas (the Dry Zone and lower Myanmar) 
  • non-aligned areas (Shan and Rakhine states).

The conflict has blown away the old coup script (roll tanks, imprison politicians, enjoy power). Instead, the coup grasped government but not the country, sparking a war that proclaims revolutionary change.

The shift ‘from coup to revolution’ was the title and theme of the annual Myanmar Update, a two-day conference at the Australian National University: ‘The military’s violent crackdown on what was initially a peaceful popular uprising provoked a near-countrywide revolutionary movement, which has brought together an array of different political, ethnic, and religious groups fighting for the shared goal of ending military rule.’

Chairing the politics session, an eminence of Australia’s study of Myanmar, Andrew Selth, quoted one of literature’s greatest opening lines: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair …’

As Selth noted, Charles Dickens’s writing about the French revolution describes much about Myanmar’s revolution.

My version of the big questions that confront Myanmar involves opposed scenarios: Will the revolt overthrow the military regime and remake the nation? Or will Myanmar fly apart, fragmenting along the fault lines of all those conflicts?

The government-in-exile, the National Unity Government (NUG), offers a vision of federation, not fragmentation. The NUG’s foreign minister, Daw Zin Mar Aung, told the conference that the military can no longer win with its old divide-and-rule tactics: ‘This is no longer about the coup. It’s not about the military.’ She said the military was losing to the NUG’s vision of federalism, to move closer to the people and ‘undo the wrongs of the past’.

The NUG’s representative to Australia, Tun Aug Shwe, told the conference that protests against the military in previous decades had aimed for dialogue and negotiation, release of political prisoners and parliamentary elections. Today, the revolution has two demands: ‘Eliminate the military leadership from Myanmar soil forever. Second, build the genuine federal democracy in Myanmar. Very focused. So previous revolution focused on the process level. But today people focus on the outcome, the end result.’

Myanmar’s military is smaller than commonly thought, according to an analysis by Ye Myo Hein, a global fellow at the Wilson Center. Dismissing estimates of a military headcount of 300,000 to 400,000, his alternative estimate of 150,000 personnel is ‘based on extensive interviews with military deserters and defectors, analysis of internal military directives and meeting notes, historical records of troop movements and sizes, and casualty counts from primary conflict data and military hospital records’.

Ye Myo Hein concludes that of those 150,000 personnel, ‘roughly 70,000 are combat soldiers. At least 21,000 service members have been lost through casualties, desertion and defection since the coup. At this troop level, the Sit-Tat [military] is barely able to sustain itself as a fighting force, much less a government.’

Ye Mo Hein told the conference that the military can’t crush the resistance so it’s preparing for an ‘enduring and protracted war’ by seeking to tighten control over urban areas and strategic routes, launch frequent forays into resistance areas, and ‘divide and conquer’. He says that if neither side can achieve a ‘decisive victory’, Myanmar could shatter into a series of warring states: ‘If the regime remains in power, the conflict will drag and Myanmar could face a political black hole, potentially leading to balkanisation. While no signs of balkanisation are visible yet, the possibility cannot be ruled out if the conflict persists and political agreement remains elusive.’

The military has ceded ground and legitimacy. The regime has proved it can’t win. What’s yet to be established is if it can lose.

Myanmar’s revolution has changed much. But it faces the opposed futures that Dickens identified in another era: ‘[W]e had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.’

Fiji’s electoral crisis: when is a coup not a coup?

When is a coup not a coup? When it’s called a constitutional crisis. But make no mistake, there’s a coup attempt in progress in Fiji, even if its foot soldiers are in the bureaucracy and courts rather than the military.

The political history of this Pacific archipelago has been so regularly punctuated by the non-peaceful transfer of power that the term ‘coup culture’ has been created to explain the cancer that has corrupted Fijian democracy for decades.

Four recognised coups have occurred in Fiji since its independence in 1970. Three of them were staged by the Fijian military—April and September 1987, both led by Sitiveni Rabuka, and December 2006, led by Frank Bainimarama. The fourth, in May 2000, was a hybrid civilian–military coup led initially by George Speight.

Less well appreciated is that there was an earlier, non-violent coup in March 1977. It was labelled a constitutional crisis but was nonetheless a coup to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Today, arguably, that event is serving as the template for a fresh attempt to hijack the electorate’s vote for change in government.

When the National Federation Party (NFP) won 26 of the 52 seats in the 1977 general election, it expected to form government with the support of an independent member of parliament. However, the governor-general, Ratu Sir George Cakobau, claimed to be unpersuaded that NFP leader Siddiq Koya could form a stable majority. He reappointed the defeated Alliance Party leader, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, as prime minister.

The Alliance Party moved a motion of confidence in Mara when parliament met to test his support. The motion was defeated and Cakobau dissolved the parliament and issued writs for new elections in September. The Alliance Party won handily after the NPF leadership broke into two factions—the flower and dove—that opposed each other in the election.

In 1977, the head of state had the key institutional role. The same is true now. Just as Cakobau declined to call on Koya to form a ministry quickly after the election, President Wiliame Katonivere has been slow to issue a proclamation to call the parliament into session.

His delay is constitutionality significant on two scores. The first is that the power of delay (up to 14 days after the return of the writs) gives the outgoing FijiFirst government time to destabilise or legally challenge the tripartite coalition—comprising the NFP, the People’s Alliance Party (PAP) and the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA)—by questioning whether it actually can muster the numbers to govern or, indeed, by breaking up the capacity of the coalition to hold together.

The delay also plays into formal parliamentary processes. Since no party received more than 50% of the vote in this month’s general election, the constitution requires a vote in parliament to determine who the parliament will accept as prime minister. So long as the parliament isn’t called into session, that vote can’t be held. However, the fortnight window for the president to call the parliament into session is absolute.

The second element of the 1977 playbook was to foment and amplify divisions within the NFP to sustain the line that an NFP government would be incapable of guaranteeing supply. This white-anting is occurring both within SODELPA and through bureaucratic pressure.

SODELPA’s general-secretary, Lenaitasi Duru, resigned his post after claiming that the internal vote to join the PAP–NFP coalition was invalid due to unspecified anomies in the way it was conducted. Duru wrote to Katonivere to ask him not to call parliament into session as scheduled. He also approached the registrar of political parties, Mohammed Saneem.

Saneem responded by requiring the SODELPA management board to revisit the vote to join the PAP and NFP in forming the governing coalition. SODELPA’s vice president, Anare Jale, expressed a belief that the board would reconfirm its original decision. This reaffirmation has now been given, with the management board repeating its original decision.

Nonetheless, the delay caused by compelling the SODELPA board to recast the vote gave FijiFirst’s general-secretary and Fiji’s attorney-general, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, the opportunity to charge that Jale had failed to be completely honest with FijiFirst’s initial bid to SODELPA. The second pitch was allowed, but it didn’t change SODELPA’s decision.

The risk to the formation of a Rabuka-led government now shifts to the three elected SODELPA members and the possibility that they won’t honour the party’s pledges of support to the PAP–NFP coalition. That risk has become greater or, at least, less uncertain because of an ambiguity in constitutional language. Depending on how that ambiguity is resolved, there may be no way of enforcing the constitutional controls over parliamentary party members.

The 2013 constitution provides for an MP to be expelled from parliament for voting against the party’s direction when the ‘leader and the secretary of the political party’ notify the speaker of the parliament of the lapse. The precise definition of these officeholders isn’t clear, especially with regard to whether the party leader is the parliamentary leader or the machine wing leader.

It appears from media reports that SODELPA party leader Viliame Gavoka’s position became vacant under the party constitution, and Duru claims it will remain vacant until the party holds its annual general meeting in 2024. Now that Duru has resigned, it appears that SODELPA is without an official secretary, though that depends on when his resignation becomes effective (he has argued that it doesn’t take effect for 30 days).

The celebrators who believed that the way ahead for a new government was clear two days ago are now facing the reality that their expectations may be dashed on the rocks of political manipulation and obstruction.

Despite the best efforts of FijiFirst to frustrate the transfer of power, it can’t be certain that its efforts will succeed. Nor can it be certain that it will be the recipient of a stable majority if the tripartite coalition collapses. It might be satisfied with the fallback of a second election à la the 1977 crisis, but it can’t count on winning in a new poll.

The decision by Bainimarama’s allies in defence and national security to call on the Republic of Fiji Military Forces to assist the police with maintaining security and stability serves as a reminder that if 1977 proves not to be the right template to prevent a peaceful transfer of power, there are other models.

Could Sudan coup lead to another Arab Spring?

The Sudanese crisis is an epitome of the ongoing struggle between the forces of authoritarianism and those of pro-democracy change that has come to feature in many states of the Arab world for more than a decade now. In Sudan, where mass protests led to the outer of long-term dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, the generals have decided to backtrack on military–civilian transitional rule and the public stands determined to see a democratic transformation of their country. How this struggle is handled, and what the outcome is, carry serious implications for authoritarian and concealed authoritarian regimes in the Arab domain.

Sudan has had a turbulent history since its independence in 1956, when the Anglo-Egyptian condominium control of the country ended. It has persistently been in conflict internally and vulnerable to outside pressure and interference. It was ravaged by a civil war for a long time, which finally resulted in the Christian majority South Sudan gaining independence from the Muslim dominated Sudan in 2011, although hostility and resource disputes linger between the two sides. The country entered an evolving phase from Sunni Islamist to semi-Islamist under General al-Bashir, who assumed power in a coup in 1993.

The architect of the coup was Hassan al-Turabi, a colourful and eloquent radical Islamist scholar and leader of the National Islamic Front. Turabi oversaw controversial Islamist policies, including the institutionalisation of sharia law and transformation of Sudan into a somewhat radical Islamist state. Osama Bin Laden was a welcome guest in Khartoum for two years after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994 and before he returned to Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in mid-1996. Also, Sudan’s relations with Iran strengthened. These developments proved to be annoying to the largely secularist Egypt under Husni Mubarak’s dictatorial rule and to Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies, which viewed any form of radical Islamism and the Sudani–Iranian linkage as contrary to their interests.

However, Turabi’s Islamism wasn’t to last long, as his relations with al-Bashir began to sour after 1996. Al-Bashir and a number of other pragmatic leaders weren’t prepared to endure UN sanctions due to Sudan’s assistance, possibly under Turabi’s influence, to the Egyptian Islamic jihad, which had sought to assassinate Mubarak.

Al-Bashir marginalised Turabi in favour of his personalised semi-Islamist dictatorship. His rule was not only haunted by civil war but also characterised by repressive measures, corruption, maladministration, human rights violations, and social and economic inequities. He was shaken by the popular uprisings, commonly dubbed the Arab Spring, a decade ago, but survived with backing from like-minded regimes in the Arab world, despite having been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court of Justice in 2009 for crimes against humanity.

By 2019, the Sudanese people had had enough of al-Bashir’s rule. Widespread public protests caused his generals to remove him from office and form a transitional military council with the promise of civilian rule, but essentially designed to protect the interest of the military as the pivotal force in the Sudanese landscape. However, the ensuing struggle between the military and civil society prompted the council to agree to the establishment of a joint transitional government, composed of a civilian cabinet, headed by a civilian prime minister, and a sovereignty council, chaired by the military.

The sovereignty council, led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and head of state, appointed Abdallah Hamdok, a highly experienced administrator who had served in several national and international positions, as prime minister. Under a draft constitutional declaration, general elections were scheduled for late 2022, in which members of the council and other current senior office holders couldn’t run, to complete Sudan’s transition to a democratic future.

Yet the military, reportedly backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which has used its financial largess to influence the processes of democratisation in accord with its preferences in the region, grew weary of losing its grip on power. In late October 2021, al-Burhan staged a coup deposing Hamdok, arresting members of his cabinet and declaring a state of emergency, and postponed the elections to 2024. This not only outraged the Sudanese people but was also widely condemned by the international community, led by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations. The African Union suspended Sudan’s membership and the Arab League expressed deep concerns. Although Egypt remained mute, the UAE and Saudi Arabia also called for civilian rule.

With the Sudanese public reviving their mass protests and international pressure mounting, al-Burhan has claimed that Hamdok hasn’t actually been arrested but is confined to the general’s house and is free for consultation. He has also released four cabinet members.

Indeed, not all coups succeed. If the Sudanese people maintain their rage, as determined as they are, and if the outside world remains supportive of their struggle, the prospects for the military to compromise appear likely. A win by the people is bound to reverberate across the Arab world, where a state–society dichotomy stubbornly underlines long-term structural instability. It could usher in another phase of the reform which started with the Arab Spring but petered out in the face of the prevalence of the forces of the status quo.

What makes this Myanmar coup different

The dominant response to the military coup in Myanmar on 1 February has been, ‘Here we go again.’ Media commentary has highlighted the strong similarities between recent events and the 1988 coup, explained by the supposedly incorrigible and unrepentant nature of the military (the Tatmadaw). The foreign policy debates of the 1990s are echoing through time with strident calls for sanctions and more muted warnings (mostly in private, but with no less urgency) of the serious harm further isolation of this long-suffering country could do.

It’s still too early to say what the coup’s implications are for Myanmar’s political development or what the most appropriate international response might be—beyond strenuously objecting to an illegitimate usurpation of power against the will of the majority of the Myanmar people.

However, we must recognise that, rather than being a replay of 1988, the 2021 coup is in fact a different type of coup by a different kind of military at a different point in world time—and it requires a different international response.

Unlike 1988, the latest coup is not intended to change the political system but rather to change the government. Its leaders have carefully positioned the takeover within the framework of the 2008 constitution and they assure people that they’ll return power to an elected government after fresh elections. The constitution says that has to happen within two to three years, depending on the process.

They might be trying to placate the international community, the Myanmar people, their own soldiers or all of the above, but there are reasons to believe that this is their preferred outcome. The transition to a quasi-democratic system in 2011 was in line with the Tatmadaw’s self-image as ‘guardians’ of the union (rather than rulers) and it has served its institutional interests as well.

The coup leaders, however, have serious grievances against Aung San Suu Kyi, whose enormous popularity and renowned obstinacy ultimately upset the fragile power-sharing system undergirding the post-2011 reforms. We can expect the military to maintain the constitution but to take steps to marginalise the National League for Democracy (NLD), so that it can’t repeat its landslide election victories and reclaim government.

While many of the coup leaders’ statements and actions do bear a strong resemblance to 1988, the Tatmadaw is far less isolated and insular today than it was 30 years ago.

Unlike his predecessor, in many ways a recluse, the current commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, is a politician in waiting who has long had his eyes on the presidency. He’s as comfortable meeting foreign dignitaries as he is with new information technology.

The Tatmadaw’s ideology has also significantly evolved. While military officers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s were indoctrinated in the ‘evils’ of democracy, they have since been taught that their duty is to help establish and protect what the constitution calls a new ‘discipline-flourishing multiparty democratic system’.

Importantly, the current generation of soldiers has lived very different lives from those before them. Like the Myanmar people, they’ve benefited from more freedoms and broader economic growth. Many have had more interactions with foreigners, military and civilian, and they’re more familiar with international standards, experiences and viewpoints.

It’s likely that there’s significant unease within the Tatmadaw about the coup, and that this could grow if the military turns increasingly reactionary and repressive.

The political landscape in Myanmar today is far more pluralistic than before. In the 1990s, the military was essentially isolated from society and facing off against a single ‘enemy’—the NLD. This is not to disregard the role of the country’s numerous ethnic rebel groups, but their struggle for federalism and ethnic rights was always largely separate from the struggle for democracy.

Since then, the military has become the focal point for a coalition of Buddhist nationalist forces that includes political parties, leading monks and civil-society organisations, such as the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, which are all anti-NLD.

The NLD is part of a much broader network of anti-authoritarian organisations, including a very active private media and numerous new think tanks and other politically oriented civil-society groups. Although the NLD was never good at building effective political alliances, this diversity makes for a much stronger and more sustainable opposition.

Both sides can count on the support of different segments of a vastly more connected and politicised population. However, there’s no doubt that supporters of the NLD and the struggle for democracy far outnumber supporters of the military and its reactionary political agenda, or that protests against the coup could grow to a point where the coup leaders will have to either compromise or use large-scale violence to restore order.

Myanmar is much more integrated into the world than it was three decades ago. Its international political and, especially, economic relations have greatly strengthened and diversified, as have its security partnerships (read: arms trade).

There’s also a much greater presence of foreign missions, transnational corporations and international organisations, including media and aid groups. In absolute terms, the generals have more to lose from negative international responses to the coup than before.

However, in relative terms, they are less vulnerable than they were in 1988. Their foreign currency holdings are much larger (in 1988, Myanmar was essentially bankrupt) and they have more options to balance against losses they may suffer from partial Western sanctions or the withdrawal of individual companies.

International politics has changed immensely since 1988 and since the end of the Cold War in particular. Many have asked: ‘How can they do this in the 21st century?’ But that premise is faulty: they can do this—and quite possibly will get away with it—exactly because it is the 21st century. When better to stage a coup than in a world of growing great-power rivalries and democracy decline, and with the disruptive impact of Donald Trump’s presidency still reverberating around the globe?

Even if Myanmar’s military leaders were not well informed about world affairs (which many of them now are), they would not have to look far from home for examples of feasible coup-style politics. When did we in the West last successfully stand up to a coup anywhere, never mind in China’s backyard?

I find it somewhat hopeful that the coup leaders are formally committed to respecting the 2008 constitution (for all its flaws, and whatever breaches they are guilty of in practice), mainly because it gives them a face-saving way out should they come to perceive that the costs of the coup are unsustainable.

Conversely, I fear that escalating confrontations between protesters and security agencies will lead to large-scale bloodshed and end hope of a quick return to civilian government. While it may be easy to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, the only way that this will not end in tragedy is through compromise. And when a military obsessed with order and stability (one thing that has not changed) confronts an essentially leaderless popular movement driven by youthful anger and shattered hopes, compromise is perhaps the hardest thing of all.

The international community must do all that it can to prevent the crisis from escalating to the point of no return. In the medium term, we must resist any temptation to force Myanmar, including its armed forces, back into isolation and insularity and risk sacrificing all the progress that, despite appearances, has been made over the past 30 years.

After Myanmar’s coup

Until recently, the last time Myanmar’s military supervised a general election whose outcome it didn’t like was back in 1990. On that occasion, a military junta refused to recognise the results, arrested the democratically elected leaders of Aung San Suu Kyi’s overwhelmingly victorious National League for Democracy (NLD) and continued to rule the country via the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

The same thing happened again on 1 February, when Suu Kyi, now the country’s de facto leader, and other politicians, including NLD ministers, were arrested in a pre-dawn swoop. The military took charge, declared a one-year state of emergency and promptly transferred power to the army’s commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing. Vice President Myint Swe, a former general, was named president, but yielded power to Hlaing.

Once again, Myanmar’s men in uniform, who ruled the country from 1962 to 2011 and had co-existed with civilian leaders in a slowly unfolding political transition over the past decade, have made clear their distaste for democracy. Last November’s general election resulted in another landslide victory for Suu Kyi’s NLD, which won 396 of 476 contested parliamentary seats and limited the army’s proxy political front, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, to just 33.

Although the humiliated military promptly alleged voter fraud, the election result didn’t fundamentally threaten its power. Myanmar’s pre-2011 constitution guarantees the army a quarter of the seats in parliament, grants it control over key ministries and disqualifies people with foreign spouses or children from becoming president, which has prevented Suu Kyi from assuming the office.

Under these conditions, a modus vivendi of sorts had emerged: the previous elections in 2015 brought Suu Kyi and her party—full of former political prisoners—to power in a de facto coalition with their former jailers. Myanmar’s democracy was thus clearly a work in progress. But that progress has now come to a jarring halt. In fact, the military staged its coup on the very day that the newly elected parliament was scheduled to convene.

Recent events in Myanmar are hardly unprecedented. Since the country gained independence in 1948, the military, now known as the Tatmadaw, has held power for far longer than civilian leaders have. Suu Kyi herself spent a total of 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and her release in November 2010, and was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize as a celebrated resistance icon. After her release, she exercised authority under constitutional power-sharing arrangements that entrenched the military’s clout and even allowed the army to intercede in government decisions when it judged this to be in the national interest.

It was an uneasy co-existence, further complicated by the contrast between Suu Kyi’s goddess-like image among the people and the army’s stone-faced unpopularity. But it seemed to be working. Suu Kyi made compromises with her uniformed political partners, even at the price of tarnishing her halo by supporting them in the bitter global debates over the persecution of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

Suu Kyi seemed to be growing in power at home even as she fell from grace abroad—notably in the eyes of her Western admirers, and especially those in the human rights community, who regarded Myanmar’s brutal military campaign against the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing and even attempted genocide. In defiant testimony to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, she refused to utter the word ‘Rohingya’, implicitly endorsing the majority view in Myanmar that the victims were ‘interlopers’ from Bangladesh rather than an ethnic minority.

Critics accused Suu Kyi of everything from appeasement to chauvinism and racism, while admirers argued that her pragmatism was the only way to advance democracy in a country still under the military’s sway. Her acquiescence in arrangements that left hundreds of political prisoners in jail and continued to punish ethnic minorities disillusioned many, leading Amnesty International to strip her of its highest award in 2018, and to calls for her to be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize as well.

Following Suu Kyi’s arrest earlier this week, the recriminations have ceased. Many governments have expressed concern and called for her release and the restoration of democracy. The military, on the other hand, stresses that its actions are constitutional.

Myanmar’s neighbours are treading warily in the coup’s aftermath, and there may be some curious reversals of earlier stances. For a long time, India unambiguously sided with democracy, freedom and human rights in Myanmar—and not just rhetorically, like the regime’s Western critics. When the State Law and Order Restoration Council violently suppressed a popular nationwide uprising in 1988, the Indian government initially offered asylum to fleeing students, allowed them to operate their resistance movement from within India (with some financial help) and supported a pro-democracy newspaper and radio station.

But then China made inroads into Myanmar, and Pakistan warmed to the generals. Chinese port construction and the discovery of large natural-gas deposits in Myanmar, as well as the State Law and Order Restoration Council’s support of ethnic insurgencies in India’s troubled northeast, all posed tangible dangers to India. As a result, Indian leaders reached their own accommodation with the regime in Yangon.

Today, China has moved closer to Suu Kyi, while India takes comfort in the wariness of Myanmar’s military towards China, long a patron to some of Myanmar’s own ethnic insurgencies. While many in India believe the country must stand up for democracy and human rights in its next-door neighbour, others counsel pragmatism and caution as the most effective way of avoiding a repeat of the setbacks of the 1988–2001 period.

‘I have a sinking feeling that no one will really be able to control what comes next’, the distinguished Burmese historian Thant Myint-U tweeted following the coup. ‘And remember Myanmar’s a country awash in weapons, with deep divisions across ethnic and religious lines, where millions can barely feed themselves.’ It’s a sobering reminder for all in the region.